6
Church stood just beyond the outer ring of Stonehenge. High above the megaliths, the moon cast intricate shadow-patterns across the surrounding grassland. It was still, and quiet, and it felt to him as if there was magic everywhere.
How long it felt since Tom had first revealed to him the secret of the Blue Fire at these stones, and he had become a willing supplicant to the numinous spirituality that pervaded these sites across the world. A few rocks, roughly shaped and proudly raised towards the stars millennia ago, yet they provided a window to the heart of Existence.
Breathless after his run from the processional river path, he approached the stones as any supplicant would have thousands of years ago, looking from the dark silhouettes to the stars and the moon, breath held in awe, and feeling the charge of well-being rising from the earth.
This is our land, he thought defiantly. This is who we are. This is why we fight.
The seemingly random connections and coincidences that had brought him back to Earth to recover the First had served another effect: renewing his purpose. In the Far Lands, the Libertarian had done everything in his power to break his spirit and drive him off the path. But here he could see clearly; think; breathe.
He moved into the circle. Electricity buzzed around his fingertips as he stroked them along the megaliths in passing, and once out of the direct moonlight he could see the faint blue light limning every stone.
Narrowing his eyes, he let the Pendragon Spirit drive his perception. After a moment he saw the serpent amongst the stones, as his ancestors had done so long ago: a sinuous trail of Blue Fire forming a spiral pattern that had so entranced the Celts they had carved it into stones and worn it on their jewellery. A symbol for the path a human takes through life, which was also a real manifestation, which was also a symbol for life itself. Did it have other meanings too?
He walked to the centre of the spiral — death and rebirth into a new life — and drove both hands palms down onto the turf. Blue sparks flew, and within seconds the ground trembled and a large area rose up to reveal a tunnel leading into the depths: the womb from which all life emerged. Quickly, he scrambled inside.
The tunnel led to a large cavern, the glistening rocks overhead washed by a sapphire light emanating from a lake of Blue Fire, one of the reservoirs that fed the searing leys criss-crossing the land. Scattered all along the rocky shore was treasure beyond imagining: gold coins, chalices, plates, jewellery, ornaments, silver artefacts, weapons, helmets, chain mail — ritual offerings to the great power from across generations.
Beneath the waves, a dark shape swam sinuously. The liquid fire cascaded off the Fabulous Beast's head as it surfaced in front of him, as majestic and awe-inspiring as the first time he had encountered it. Scales, tines and horns glimmered in the blue light, and the leathern wings gradually unfolded from beneath the fire. Behind it, he could see smaller, newer Beasts swimming.
The creature towered over him, the heat from its breath enough to bring him out in a sweat, but he wasn't afraid. Looking it deep in the eye, he let their consciousnesses merge, coping with the queasiness of processing two images in his mind: him looking at the Fabulous Beast; the Beast looking back at him.
'I know there's more to you,' he said to the creature, to himself. 'What are you?'
'Existence.' A deep, masculine voice rang out strong and clear across the cavern, but when Church turned, he saw the same woman he had encountered with the Fabulous Beast in the cavern under Boskawen-Un in Cornwall more than two thousand years earlier. Pale skin, black hair, eyes burning with the Blue Fire. 'I gave you knowledge and purpose the last time we met,' the woman continued, although her lips did not move.
As the Fabulous Beast moved beside the woman, its scales and bone and tissue changed until it appeared as if it was made of the Blue Fire.
'Two of you,' Church said. 'Two faces. There's that duality thing again — another of those patterns that keeps repeating through the universe.'
'The dark and the light are spread throughout all there is, in every fibre, every atom,' the woman said. 'But to enable direct change, the two powers must focus upon one place, one time. The Devourer of All Things has chosen the Burning Man-'
'And Existence manifests in this form,' Church interrupted. 'You've been influencing things directly all along.'
'There is a reason why all things have happened, from the very smallest to the greatest. In your own personal story, there is a reason. You have been shaped, schooled, prepared for everything that lies ahead. You were chosen Brother of Dragons — the first and the last, the once and future. Of all the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, only you can join your consciousness with the essence of Existence in this corporeal place. Only you.'
The words stung Church as he began to understand their deeper meaning. 'The murder of my girlfriend, Marianne-?'
'Necessary.'
'Being torn apart from Ruth and hurled back in time, having to fight my way back to her, seeing her torn between Veitch and me?'
'All necessary. All part of the shaping of the hero… the king… who will save the land.'
'The Libertarian?'
There was a long pause before the rich, deep voice continued, 'There is always a risk. Death is a powerful catalyst. The experience of it shapes the soul, but its potency can sometimes lead to corruption and despair. The other factors in the transmutation should mitigate against that — love, friendship, support — but in the final account, the landscape of a human heart, and a human mind, is unmappable.'
'So I could still ruin all your careful planning?'
'The fate of everything rests with you, Jack Churchill.'
'Shavi was right. The pattern…' Church said to himself, his head spinning as he tried to accept the weight of what he was being told. 'How much has been manipulated?'
'Everything, in every life. Sometimes Fragile Creatures make choices against the direction of the plan, choices with unforeseen but enormous consequences, and other changes must be made to reaffirm the pattern.
'But, essentially, everything. Everybody plays a part. The person they choose to hurt, the one they choose to help. The work they do, the things they create, the words they pass on, which then get passed on to others. Everything.
'The pattern materialises in seemingly random events and coincidences, in ancient tales and contemporary stories and music and works of art. In the patterns in nature, the patterns on the landscape, the patterns men make in life. Numbers are key. The hand of Existence is clear if one only looks with care.'
'But we always dismiss it,' Church said. 'The human brain has evolved from the earliest time to see patterns in everything, but we dismiss it as a quirk, a throwback, in the same way we dismiss random events and connections as coincidences.'
'There are no coincidences.'
His thoughts raced. 'The legends, the old stories, are the key to the pattern. The king shaped by events to be a great hero, who waits in some symbolic under-hill to be called back in the world's darkest hour, with his knights, to beat the forces of darkness. The king who represents both a man and the Blue Fire. The same story repeated over and over in different legends, even in modern religions in a slightly different form. There's the pattern in its biggest form. There's… me.'
'You are the legend. You are at the heart of the pattern.'
Church looked into the woman's face, and then into the shimmering features of the Fabulous Beast, and was convinced he saw a glimmer of something important that was unspoken. 'If this was all the creation of a dying brain, then I would be the heart of the pattern — because I created everything. I'd be the true god of this world.'
'What is life, what is death? What is real, what is not?'
Church could see he wasn't going to get anywhere with that line of questioning. 'And this pattern that's been building… it's designed to overthrow the Void?'
'Yes.'
'And it began… when?'
'At the beginning. And it will end at the end.'
